Thread: DOS is not dead
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Old 11th September 2011
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John View Post
Today DOS is cheap system to someone who has small private bussines (as doctor, dentist...) and why he/she for one program which use to buy expensive licence for multitasks OS?
Actually, the *BSD can do all this, & they are free too. Some might argue that they are more free.

Personally, I wouldn't be so risky to base a business on DOS. While a quick Google search did reveal that some word processors are still available, I question how long drivers will remain current. Equally problematic, a large part of business is based upon sharing documents, & when a potential partner or customer wants you to write up a proposal & it isn't written in a Word-compatible form, you may have killed the deal.

DOS proper was also limited to 640KB of memory. Yes, there was DPMI, but do all third-party applications support it?

The problem in advocating that DOS is not dead is that anyone seriously using it will be entirely on their own -- meaning all support, configuration, & troubleshooting. While there may be someone who has the technical acumen to fix everything that breaks or needs to be enhanced, how much time will they be dedicating to the effort? Will the core business suffer from lack of attention?

While it might be a romantic notion that DOS can be made viable today, the rest of the world most likely doesn't share in the nostalgia.
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